So I made some bets on energy services company’s over the last 18-24 months or so. I thought now might be a time to do some sort of postmortem on the trades and see how they have performed. Full disclosure: recently I have added to some, sold some and continue to hold some of the company’s mentioned. See the Portfolio page for current holdings.

This post will be structured in 4 parts:

Was it wise to bet on Energy Services sector relative to the overall market for the given time period? This should provide an indication of whether looking at the sector from a top down standpoint was a wise decision.

Within the sector, did I pick stocks that outperformed? This should help me understand my stock picking abilities on an individual company basis for the time frame.

Did the stocks that I chose outperform the market?

Did the stocks chosen produce a positive total return?

Before getting started, below are the 4 companies I bought shares in. The first 3 are based in Canada, with the last one being Nasdaq listed.

The results show that buying this sector because it was depressed may not have been the wisest strategy.

Within the sector, did I pick stocks that outperformed?

Using the same dates, how did the stocks that I chose do against their peers in the sector? This is definitely a nuanced question. Especially if you look at all the names in the ETF. Not sure it’s fair to grade a 50mil market cap Canadian company against a much larger company. Regardless, the results are below:

Date

Energy Sector

Stocks

22/11/2016

-17.7%

43.5%

11/05/2017

1.8%

-13.1%

16/10/2017

-7.2%

8.2%

20/07/2017

4.5%

72.2%

Average

-4.7%

27.7%

As you can see, on average I did better than the energy services sector during the time frame.

Did the stocks that I chose outperform the market?

When you stack up my picks against the market, you get the following results.

Date

Market

Dean

22/11/2016

5.0%

43.5%

11/05/2017

2.5%

-13.1%

16/10/2017

-2.4%

8.2%

20/07/2017

7.9%

72.2%

Average

3.2%

27.7%

This is with the most recent pullback in the markets.

Did the stocks chosen produce a positive total return?

The results showed an average return of 28% over a 9 month time frame. No complaints here. Not sure I can really draw much of a conclusion over a 9 month period and with only 4 stocks being chosen.

Regardless, I wanted to share the results and invite any feedback readers may have.